Schaub lead the league in yards, Andre had a Jerry Rice run with consecutive 1500+ yard years and Foster was the best back over a 3 year period. We sent 3/5ths of the offensive line to the probowl.
Tell me. How does our offense look? League leaders? Name the player who's going to lead the league in anything ... Mallett? Hoyer? Foster? Fiedo? How many lineman are we sending to the probowl? What's it REALLY look like now? We rode Kubiak's shadow last year as Crennell got all of the turnover karma that struck wade and his 'ed reed handicap'.
tell me all about what's really happening.
Scooter, I agree with you that Kubiak's tenure was an overall success as evidenced by his W-L record compared to the previous coaching staff, and by his 2 playoff trips.
I just feel that when you really boil it down, he had a trick offense that came up short at the business end of the season when it really mattered. There were certain teams who could blow up anything Kubiak wanted to do on O for an entire afternoon. I think the 2 New England games where they pummelled us was the peak of Kubiak's abilities, not due to the thrashing they gave us (twice), but because when it really mattered, and things like homefield advantage or trips to championship games were on the line, the top teams had our number.
That, coupled with the streaky nature of his teams over the years, where we'd lose all hope for a season in the space of 3 games and look like contenders either side of that, meant the writing was on the wall.
I remember writing 3 or 4 years ago that Kubiak's tenure would always be in thrall to Matt Schaub, he was hamstrung from year 2 to an above average (yet far from elite) QB with a knack for getting injured by cheap shots. You can't move on from that unless you go 2-14 and the fact that Schaub's injury was pretty much a career ender makes it seem a bit unfair to write about him like this but that was Kubes' downfall.
Now, I'm pretty much amazed that Kubes has got this chance to go and coach a great Broncos team, I'm really happy for the guy because he seems like a very decent person. I'll be interested to see what he's learnt from his first HC gig to his second, but there's a very interesting parallel in the QB situation he walks into.
Manning is going to be hanging it up in the next year or so and Kubiak will have to find himself a QB, this time he has a loaded team to place around his new QB and will receive plenty of cap relief from the retirement too. I'll be watching with a lot of interest as to how he handles it. Will he take the temptation to trade for a 'sure thing' a la Schaub, or will he be going all in to draft a guy at the top of the draft who he can make his own.
The QB whisperer tag never really got proved in Houston, although Schaub probably made the best of his abilities. And will Wade manage to sustain success coaching a D beyond 2 years for the first time ever will be a nice little aside.